Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to devices that print food product rotation labels. When food is prepared in a commercial food service environment and placed into containers for short term storage, the containers are labeled for reasons of food safety and quality. The labels that are applied to the containers are called food product rotation labels. Devices that are utilized to print these labels are Product Rotation Label Printers.
Description of the Prior Art
Food product rotation labels have been in common use in the food service industry for over 50 years. They are marked with the date and time the product was prepared and often marked with the time and date to discard the product for reasons of food safety and quality. The first product rotation labels were hand written by food service workers and affixed to the food containers. The labels would often contain preparation time, discard date and discard time and user initials. Food service workers would inspect the labels and discard the product if the food reached the discard date and time.
In the late 1990's, small embedded devices and low cost direct thermal label printers were combined to allow users to more easily and efficiently produce labels. Today, devices are programmed with product lists containing hold time and any additional information such as container contents, bar codes or information the user finds useful. Generally, using a display and keypad, the user selects a product label to print from a product list. Using an internal real time clock and the hold time supplied from the product list, the device calculates the discard date and time and prints the discard date and time on the label along with other information. Multiple devices exist in the industry today that contain the above features.
After the labels are printed and affixed to the food containers, food service workers routinely forget to inspect the labels for expired food products. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a device with hardware and software that will store a list of labels printed along with the discard time, and when a particular container expires, create an audible and visual alert to indicate that a food product has expired.
Food service workers generally are instructed to prepare a quantity of food that attempts to minimize waste. That means that most of the products prepared and labeled are served to guests. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide software and a user interface that allow the user to quickly and efficiently remove products that have been served from the list of printed labels. This feature would prevent discard alerts of products that are no longer being held.
Commercial kitchens often have standard groups of products that need to be labeled on a daily basis, such as bottles of sauces or condiments. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide software and an operator interface that allow a user to segregate a portion of the product list, called a station, and batch print all the product rotation labels in that station with one key press.
Food service workers are generally instructed to prepare multiple types and differing quantities of food throughout the day using a printed report called a preparation list, or “prep list” for short. This printed prep list is typically generated by the creation of a forecast based on the current menu and previous sales. The paper report is utilized by the kitchen staff as instructions to the time, product and quantity to prepare. This paper report which must be posted can become contaminated with raw food when handled, causing a cross-contamination food safety issue. Additionally, keeping track of what products are prepared depends on the kitchen staff notating the paper prep list. Management needs to review the report and inspect that the products have been prepared. This process is inefficient. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a feature in the device that accepts the food preparation list electronically through the facility's local network. The display on the device would then present the prep list to the kitchen staff. When a product is selected from the list and the product rotation label is printed, the list would automatically be annotated with a check mark or the like, indicating that the product has been prepared. Management can then review the screen to insure products are being prepared in a timely fashion.
Managers of large commercial kitchens are extremely busy insuring food is being prepared timely and efficiently. To insure preparation is being accomplished requires the manager to perform a physical inspection. Therefore, it would be advantageous if the status of the prep list screen can be remotely accessed via the facility's Ethernet network and the current list with the status of the prep list be played on a dashboard or hand held device.
Printing and applying product rotation labels are an important part of food safety. Many times food service workers do not follow procedure and properly label all the containers of food. Standard practice in the industry is to utilize management to perform a physical inspection to assure that product rotation labels are being generated and applied. Large enterprises that have multiple sites have difficulty in inspecting and generating timely and accurate product rotation label compliance reports. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a system that would log each label printed and send the log to a web database, allowing a compliance report to be generated. The database can be programmed to calculate the acceptable number of labels utilized. The label compliance report would then highlight sites that fall below the acceptable compliance limit. These sites would then be coached to bring them up to label compliance standards.
It is common in the food industry to use a label that contains a color that represents the day the product was prepared or the day it will expire. Every day users are instructed to look for a specific color of a label. An example is when products that had been labeled with a green label have expired, users look for all the green labels and discard the products. The automated printing systems use a label containing seven colored boxes pre-printed at the top of the label. The colored boxes are imprinted with the letters of the day of the week for quick reminders. The printer will black out six of the colored boxes and leave one box, exposing the color which represents the day the product needs to be discarded or the color represents the day the product is prepared. Currently, customers need to choose if they want to use the colors to represent the prep day or the discard day. Therefore, it would be advantageous to print a row of colored boxes at the top of the label, and a row of colored boxes at the bottom of the label and then using the automated printing system, mark the top row with the date prepared and the bottom row with the color of the day to discard.